Adoption update!

We finally have some news! We have a couple who is interested in us! We had a phone interview with them yesterday, and I think it went well. They are interviewing other couples too, so, we are trying to guard our hearts. She did say that she would like to meet us face to face, so we feel like that is a good thing. Please pray that God's will would be done. And, pray for this couple as they make this tough decision, as well as the baby she is carrying! Thanks!

Update

Well, life has been very busy for us here at the Hellenthal household! We closed on our house on November 4th, and ever since we have busy remodeling that. We also mourned the loss of my Grandma Bredeway shortly after Thanksgiving. We have been busy with work, small group Bible study, friends, family, etc. The thing that has been taking up most of our time is the house though. We are hopefully moving in this week. I can't wait! It is going to be so great to have a house of our own.

We haven't heard anymore about the adoption. All of our paperwork is complete, and turned in. We are now just waiting for a birthmom to say that she wants us to parent her child. We are praying for this to go fast, but, God has His own timing.

I think that's about it for now. I will post some photos of the house in the next couple days.

Slacking

Hey all-
So sorry that we haven't been posting much on this blog. We have been so extremely busy with church, work, friends, Bible Study, house hunting, and the usual daily chores of keeping up with the housework and laundry.

We have been good, though. Busy, but good and happy. We got word a few weeks ago that an offer that we placed on a house was ACCEPTED! We are going to be moving! We are very excited, but kind of nervous at the same time. We have our home inspection today, and then hopefully we can close on the house later this week or really early next week. Then, the real fun begins! Boxes, painting, cleaning, more painting, tons of drywall, more painting and cleaning. It needs some serious work to it, but, we got it at a great price, and when we resell, it will be worth it! I will try to post some photos on here as the progress happens. Please pray for us as we finish this process, and as we begin to fix up our home.

Unfortunately, we don't have any new news to report on the adoption front. The Lord knows that we can only handle one thing at a time, and right now our minds are on our new home. Of course, we are always and forever praying for our baby, and wanting him/her home, but, right now we need to make a good living enviornment for the child. However, all of our paperwork is finished, for right now, and we are on the Bethany "Waiting Families" list that they publish on the website. You can check out our story at www.bethany.org. Click Family Profiles (bottom right hand), and then check MI as the state and we are on the 2nd page. We are praying for patcience as we go through this. We take comfort in knowing that God knows the baby he wants in our lives. It's all in his timing. What an awesome thing to remember. Sometimes, we get a little discuraged, and think, why weren't we picked? What's wrong with us? Why didn't they like us? But then, we remember God's promise to us in Jeremiah where he says, "I know the plans I have for you..."

In the meantime, we have been very involved at church doing Children's Worship, PowerPoint, Youth Group, Small Group, Bible Study with the High School students...it's all awesome! We are so blessed to be a part of HHCRC! We love our church family. We have been also busy trying to fit in time with our friends, time with just each other, time with nieces and nephews, and the list goes on.

Anyways, that's it for now. Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Megan

SEATTLE!

Well, we survived our week with 16 high schoolers! YAY! No, but, in all seriousness, it was a fantastic trip to Seattle! I won't give a day by day synopsis, because that could get kind of boring. However, we learned alot, grew in our relationship with Christ and our group grew closer together as well! Some of the "highlights" include:

-working at a community garden
-cleaning up some trash under a high-way overpass (where people live in their cars)
-a 11:00 p.m-3:00 a.m. visit to the ER for Hefty to find out that he has gull-stones (and will need surgery eventually)
-a visit to a Center for Spiritual Living (where the students had an opportunity to grow in their faith, while learning about a different world-view)
-a evening with some family who are from Lynden, WA (Thanks Bonnie and Ted!)

It was a great week!! If you want to know more, visit www.hhcrcedge.blogspot.com
Then after that, we were off to Lansing for a wedding of good friends, Matt and Katie.
Congrats guys! Hefty was in the wedding, and it went wonderfully and it was beautiful!

Now, hopefully we will have some time to relax for the rest of the summer. We haven't heard anything on the house or the adoption yet. God is teaching us patience that's for sure!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic day!!!

Megan

A waiting family....

That's what we are....
A WAITING FAMILY!
YAY! Our home-study was approved, and we are now officially a waiting family through Bethany Christian Services. This makes us excited and nervous at the same time! We are excited because we feel that this is where God is calling to be in our lives, and we have seen his re-assurance by the way that we have been blessed with financial support, and things have gone smoothly for us also. I have no doubt that we will be great parents, but it's still a bit crazy to think that in a few months, we could be parents! We covet your prayers for patience as we wait. This could be a long, hard process so we are going to need patience and God's grace to flow over us. So, that's about all there is to update now.

Home Study

Well, I haven't been doing a very good job at keeping this blog up-dated. Hefty and I both had individual meeting this past week for Part 1 of our Home Study. It was a bit nerve-raking, but it went well, and we answered the questions as honestly as we could. Now, this Thursday, June 4, we have our house-visit. Our case-worker will come into our home and make sure that it's safe for a little baby. So, last week we went and bought new Carbon Monoxide detectors and a new fire extinghuiser, because ours were alittle out dated. On Sunday, we spent most of the night cleaning our bedroom and living room and then tonight it's on to the kitchen and bathroom. Fun, fun. Once she has our home-study written up, we will go on the Bethany website for birthmoms to look at and pick us, hopefully. We also have to put together a Shutterfly book with all sorts of pictures of us in it that our case workers will show a birth-mom. Seems like a lot of work, right? Our case-worker said that it will take about a year, on average, for us to get chosen, however, it could go a little faster, or slower.

Enough on the adoption though. On Memorial Day, we bought a new couch! We decided that it was time to get a new one, and Art Van was having a good sale, so we went and bought one. It is so nice and comfortable! It is bigger than our older one, so that's nice. We also planted our flowers that day, and spent time outside. It was such a nice day to spend with the two of us. We also took our god-daughter, Lyvi, to Crazy Bounce last week. I thought that she would love going down the slides and stuff, but she didn't care for it at all. I think that she was alittle scared of all the big inflatables.

We are off to Washington DC in about 2 weeks and then Seattle, WA after that. It's going to be a busy, yet fun, summer! Youth Group is done for the summer, which is sad and relaxing at the same time.

Hope everything is well with everyone :)
Megan

"...Life keeps rolling on..."

Well, let's see--what's been happening in our lives. First of all, a few weeks ago, we went to a march in downtown Grand Rapids for the Invisible Children of Uganda. There is a rebel leader in Uganda who is abducting little kids (8-9 years old) for his rebel army. It's a terrible injustice that is going on, that not many people know about. To learn more, go to www.invisiblechildren.com. Anyways, we went to this march/rally thing in Grand Rapids. It was pouring rain. We were cold. We were wet. We marched on. We went with a few of our youth groupies. Our main purpose was to create awareness for this problem. This whole thing was a really cool experience, however, I felt very in-adequate. I felt very small compared to this large problem! What can I, a 25 year old female in Holland, MI do to help these kids in Uganda? Well, I have learned that I must do something because God calls us to care for the widows and the orphans. So, even though I feel small, what we did was important.

We are almost done with EDGE for this year. It will be nice to have a small break from it. Don't get me wrong, we love Youth Group, but a break will be nice too. Then we have the summer trip to Seattle...YEAH! It will be a great trip! I can't wait to see what God is going to do within the lives of the kids in our group! I think that's all for now...

Megan